


I Am

by soldierspy (hinterland)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Hell, Spiritual torture, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-15
Updated: 2013-02-15
Packaged: 2017-11-29 08:03:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/684685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hinterland/pseuds/soldierspy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For thirty years, Dean fights.</p>
<p>He is torn apart. And again. Endless cycle. Prep work, Alastair says.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Am

**Author's Note:**

> Going through the backlog of old fic. Featuring very liberal artistic license of Supernatural & Biblical canon, and liberal use of my thesaurus.

  I  
Time is not static in Hell. It is: running, staggering, slowing to a crawl; arrhythmic. What rules exist in the ticking of the clocks are found in the cries of the tormented themselves, fueling the unfolding of hours just as their screams give shape to this place. Time: paced by pain and unique to each agonized soul.

It slows as he peaks upon the precipice of unbearable torment, and the seconds expand to fill lifetimes between each shudder of his heart. He lives and dies and stays caught in the throes before another beat can be forced out of the faltering wad of muscle.

Because Alastair likes to begin by housing the favorites in their old molds of flesh, the offense is greater still when he puts his art into practice. Just as soon as he has filled the once familiar shape of Dean Winchester -- solid, bones encased by muscle and skin, and all of it just one huge receptor for that most basic, most base sensation of animal pain -- the maestro puts his hooks and talons and disease to work. Cells are pierced at random, leaking their salt nectar as his musculature is dissolved, fibers unwound like the pieces of string that they are. He is dissected, and in the spray of vomit and misery, Alastair is a god who deconstructs and builds again.

  II  
He is torn apart. And again. Endless cycle. Prep work, Alastair says. 

When he screams, it's always for Sam. Alastair frees him from that habit, making Sam's name acid that eats away at him from the inside out. Anathema.

Dean eventually stops calling for him.

  III  
Alastair holds off on pushing him to the brink and leading him over it for twenty years. There is only the plunge: immersion, complete, into the tearing of flesh substantial, as Alastair pries him apart and holds him under a froth of his own broken molecules. The plunge is literal too, for brackish Hellwater is forced burning down his throat, drowning him even though he hasn't tasted drink in decades. For twenty years, his head is stilled under the weight of agony formed from agony, and when Alastair's grip upon him lessens, it is not to let him resurface, but merely to adjust his hold on this one quaking little soul. 

No first breath after drowning. For twenty years, only waves of pain on a sea of torments that are of Alastair's own design. And they are unceasing (the demon's an ace, after all).

  IV  
Finally -- 

Beyond the precipice. A crescendo of singing nerves, apoptosis of self. A soul is rent into pieces -- finally, after twenty years of teasing _prep work_ \-- and each piece is suspended for time immeasurable in the light that not even Hell's darkest maw can smother. The fallen angel locked down there, trapped in the deepest of trenches, is still radiating Heaven's Grace in the purest white. He is caught in a beam of this celestial illumination -- it sears through him and the Devil himself gives Dean his momentary respite. He is purged into nothingness, becomes nothing, is nothing for only the thinnest of Hell's seconds, because Alastair soon reaches in to rebuild him.

And with every rebirth, tar fills the crevices that form where his soul was cinched back together. A stain with every creation -- soon he is black-souled and poisonous, silt oozing out to be scooped up by Alastair. He feeds it back to him when the refusal to learn and pick up the whip himself emerges. _The rack is my home_ , and for that last lingering bit of smart ass, he is returned to it. He is lashed; Alastair is wanton with his wounds. Alastair promises him _soon_ , and the cycle begins again. 

Precipice. White light (it pulses brighter as the pieces of him become blacker). The void. Alastair. _Step off the rack and become what you are._ Refusal; disassembly. For another ten years, Alastair works him. 

(Ten years are enough.)

  V  
What are you now? You were a martyr for the idol which you loved, and in your strength you were weak. Sacrifice made upon sacrifice only weakens the foundations, and so diminished, so alone, you broke as expected. Thirty years of resisting is no petty thing; compare your thirty to the Son's forty days, where his father's love was always implied; but you, child soldier from the start, fashioned as a tool and used as bluntly, you had nothing to fall back on, no paternal comfort, no holy father. You were alone and armed only with the strength of one word: _no_. 

But all things must break; all things made can be unmade. And so broken, you were restored. Does the one who made you not have the right to take you back? What is John to you? Father of flesh you have forgotten. What is Alastair? He who taught you how to make bones sing, fed you flesh corrupted, gave you such an ecstasy of brutality that you didn't think possible. You are his creation, his finest, a righteous man shedding blood in Hell, for when you finally realized that his command to step off the rack and put others on it was a gift, an invitation to gorge yourself on the violence you had been given, you loved him. Hew them to pieces, and for the ones he saves especially for you, draw your fingers across the strings of skin and soul and demand from them the songs of this place.

What are you now? Demon -- may you rejoice in the seal that has been broken, even as you recoil from the Grace that it brings forth.


End file.
